virtual: Documentation: simplify and generalize paravirt_ops.txt

The general documentation we have for pv_ops is currenty present
on the IA64 docs, but since this documentation covers IA64 xen
enablement and IA64 Xen support got ripped out a while ago
through commit d52eefb47 present since v3.14-rc1 lets just
simplify, generalize and move the pv_ops documentation to a
shared place.

Cc: Isaku Yamahata <yamahata@valinux.co.jp>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>
Cc: Chris Wright <chrisw@sous-sol.org>
Cc: Alok Kataria <akataria@vmware.com>
Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org
Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
Cc: Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@intel.com>
Cc: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>
Cc: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org
Cc: kvm@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>

1 files changed, 32 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt b/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..d4881c00e339
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/virtual/paravirt_ops.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+Paravirt_ops
+============
+
+Linux provides support for different hypervisor virtualization technologies.
+Historically different binary kernels would be required in order to support
+different hypervisors, this restriction was removed with pv_ops.
+Linux pv_ops is a virtualization API which enables support for different
+hypervisors. It allows each hypervisor to override critical operations and
+allows a single kernel binary to run on all supported execution environments
+including native machine -- without any hypervisors.
+
+pv_ops provides a set of function pointers which represent operations
+corresponding to low level critical instructions and high level
+functionalities in various areas. pv-ops allows for optimizations at run
+time by enabling binary patching of the low-ops critical operations
+at boot time.
+
+pv_ops operations are classified into three categories:
+
+- simple indirect call
+  These operations correspond to high level functionality where it is
+  known that the overhead of indirect call isn't very important.
+
+- indirect call which allows optimization with binary patch
+  Usually these operations correspond to low level critical instructions. They
+  are called frequently and are performance critical. The overhead is
+  very important.
+
+- a set of macros for hand written assembly code
+  Hand written assembly codes (.S files) also need paravirtualization
+  because they include sensitive instructions or some of code paths in
+  them are very performance critical.